Things That Made Me Go Hmmmm…

Observations of newly landed immigrant from the United States.

So this post which I began at the end of August has taken much longer than I expected, and was far more effort than I imagined. But, finally, it is done.

Quick Side Note:
Apparently this post is too long for most email platforms. You may need to click through to view this post on a web browser via your phone or computer.

Much of my daily life here is basically the same as back in the USA. I am still doing my morning walks, only now they are 5K - 6K instead of 3-4 miles¹, and much of my other routines are unchanged. But there are definitely differences. Some big, some very miniscule. One of my ADHD superpowers is the ability to needlessly zero in on details of the mundane. Thus this post on observations.

Some of these may be familiar, some may be quite obscure, and some are not unique to Portugal, but to Europe in general. But all of these are things that have stood out to me since my arrival on July 29th.

Can a hotdog in a can or jar taste as good as a Ball Park Frank?

• Hot dogs come in cans and jars. Now to be fair, I have heard of this before, but I just thought this was just an option, not the only option to buy hot dogs. For the record, I have not tried them, I have heard that they taste the same (I am not sold). Because I'm not a big hot dog eater, it may be a while, but I am willing to try them at some point.

These are just a few of the hand shaped knockers I encounter on my daily walks.

• Another thing I was well aware of was door knockers shaped like a hand. What I didn't expect was just how prevalent they are. All styles, sizes, and variations. Just recently on a morning walk, I photographed more than twenty of them in about thirty minutes, and those are just the ones I stopped to photograph, there were dozens more I didn't stop for because they were too similar to ones I already captured. Perhaps I'll do an entire post about door knockers soon, they are really fascinating.

While street names can be very long, the signs often contain additional information about the person the street is named after.

• The majority of streets in Porto seem to be named after people of importance. This is quite similar to streets back in the US, only instead of using only the surname of the important person (ex Clark St in Chicago²), they use their full name. Add to this the established practice of children having three or four names. At least one personal name and one surname from one of the parents, with the legally permissible maximum of two personal names and four surnames) a child can potentially have up to six names. This means street names can be very long, some as long as 40 characters. Our street is named after a Porto Bishop from the first half of the 20th century and is even abbreviated on the street sign by a few characters. That said, I still struggle with remembering it, and cannot correctly write it out without looking at my notes on my phone.

Definitely not what I expected to see walking down the street in my neighborhood.

• Sex toys and other sexual health needs are sold on the sidewalk 24/7. Now this was quite a surprise, albeit a somewhat pleasant one. Yoav and I were walking home recently when he saw this machine across the street. At first, we thought it dispensed drug store items, but then we saw the lube and dildos. Honestly, my first thought was "How cool is that?" Seriously, this is only a few blocks from our apartment and while I don't see myself pursuing the goods at 3 am, it is good to know they are there for somebody who is. Besides, you never know when you need a new toy.

This is how bread should be done... Not filled with preservatives and additives to keep it shelf ready for a month.

Every single morning at the end of my walk, I stop in at the corner store and pick up a freshly baked sandwich roll to make a sandwich for lunch. Cost? €.21 (about .23 cents in USD). Freshly baked bread and pastries abound everywhere, and while some are certainly better than others, they all basically outshine the options for freshly baked goods in the US at a fraction of the price. Even fancy artisan loaves are less than half the price compared to the US. Yes, there are pre-sliced loaves of bread (think Bimbo brand), but the majority of bread is fresh daily, and the quality is amazing. I will say that as amazing as a half meter long "baguete rustica" is for €.59 (about .64 cents in USD), I cannot eat it before it goes stale, so I don't indulge often.

How many chocolate cereals are necessary? Apparently about one third of the entire selection.

• The cold cereal aisle at the supermarket isn't an entire aisle like it is in the US, it’s more like a cereal section. There are about 75% fewer cold cereal varieties available (most varieties are from Nestle and Kelloggs) and they usually only come in one size. That said.... A full third of the options are based on some variation of chocolate. The selection of chocolate cereals is truly astounding! There are only nine pictured here, but I had photographed 17 different varieties only to edit them down because the gallery feature limits you to nine photos. Personally, I am not a chocolate cereal fan, and have not had any of these. Most likely because in my mind, they all pretty much taste the same, and I remember that flavor from growing up in the US.

• Coins, coins, coins... one cent coins, two cent coins... One Euro coins, two Euro coins... So many coins... But no quarters. I have certainly used Euros on my previous visits to the EU, but never long enough to spend this much time with coins. Now that I've been here three full months, I have grown accustomed to them all, and I think using coins for the €1 and €2 Euro coins makes a lot of sense. Not so sure about the two cent coin. And while I am mentioning money, I understand why the paper notes are different sizes (so the blind can easily determine which is which), but they are quite inconvenient to carry in your wallet without being rigorous about organizing them by denomination from small to large.

Most of these shots were take just after dawn (when nobody was watching me) and you can see how the lobbies are just dark the further back you go. The lobby on the bottom right is our building at about 6:30 am. The outer lobby is lit only by nearby street lights and the dim glow of the inner lobby where the elevators are located.

• This is something I noticed on our first visit back in 2018. Apartment building lobbies are very often completely dark, even at night. Because electricity tends to be a bit pricey in Portugal (and inefficient incandescent lighting was standard back when they were built) building owners tend to either have a motion detector to turn on lights when somebody enters the space, or a push-button on a timer, which is pushed by the person entering the space³.

  Larger buildings (like ours on the bottom right) do tend to have some lighting on at night, but it is still often quite minimal, and most of it is off during the day. Newer buildings seem to be the exception to this, often featuring very contemporary LED lighting. I would guess this is because they tend to be more expensive units and the residents are less concerned about keeping the lights on.

  Of course the locals are accustomed to this, but to me one of the many functions of a building lobby, especially one that is spacious and/or elaborate, is to be inviting. Having the lights off is the opposite of inviting, and makes the building look empty and dead. Given that LED lighting uses a fraction of electricity, I would think it couldn't possibly cost much to have some lighting on in the lobby all the time, or at least at night.

So there you go.... I have so many more observations/questions to write about, such as… Why are there metal rings around the tops of nearly all older buildings? Why are European plugs so gigantic? And more…. But this is a good start, and I will likely do another post about them. Of course, none of the above is a dealbreaker in any way (except perhaps the not as yet taste-tested hot dogs), but they are definitely things that have stood out to me as different or even weird.

Next post....

The containers have been loaded!

The containers have been loaded!

Parting Shot: This is a new addition to my posts. I have hundreds of photos taken since I arrived, and I thought this could be a great place to post some of the more interesting ones. Let me know if you like this feature in the comments.

This is the view I woke up to one morning last month. The fog was ebbing and flowing, revealing and then hiding various buildings. This shot shows the top floors of a Hotel Vila Galé sitting above the fog bank, truly a very Wizard of Oz moment.

1. Today, as this post goes live at about 8:00 am, I am out on my daily walk of five to six kilometers. This is walk number 1654 in the past 1654 days (since April 20, 2020). I have walked in five countries, fifteen states, and dozens of cities over the past four and a half years. I began my walks as part of my recovery from cancer surgery in the fall of 2019. They were never intended to be seven days a week, but somehow it has just worked out that way, and now I want to keep the streak going as long as physically possible. Back in the states, my daily goal was three to four miles, but I am adapting to the metric system. Besides, saying I walk 5k a day sounds good. Full disclosure, I have missed four of my walks due to travel, or other valid reasons, but I simply made them up as an entirely separate walk within the following week. I am incredibly fortunate to be able to devote an hour a day to walking.

2. Clark Street in Chicago is named after American Revolutionary War soldier George Rogers Clark who captured most of the Northwest Territory from the British. If the street naming conventions of Portugal were used, it would be called “George Rogers Clark Street”.

3. When I first arrived at our apartment building, one of the first things I noticed was that there were push-buttons located all over the place. Next to every front door, on every stairway, and even half-way up at the landings. I was perplexed as to why this would be. But on our recent visit to the US for our visas, my father in-law mentioned that when he lived in Tel Aviv, he had to push buttons to turn on the lights in the hallways of their apartment building. Aha! Bingo! Ding, Ding, Ding!... I immediately realized that this is what all the buttons are for in the hallways of our building. The system is no longer in use, and our stairwells are mostly dark all the time (except when the power does actually go out), but I finally understand why.